Skip to main content

E. F.


She was short, very, with a compact build. Not overweight at all, but definitely not exemplary of the type of thin Parisian silhouette so much in fashion, so expected in France. She wore trim black trousers, tight black sweaters, flat black shoes; she wore no lipstick but sometimes lined her eyes, doe-like, in liquid black; sometimes she knotted chiffon scarfs around her neck (she did have a way with fashion nonetheless). Her hair was glossy black and short, slightly wavy. She was Parisian, born and raised, but because of her "Arab" name and her darker complexion, she often faced discrimination. She transformed a lifelong feeling of being marginalized into a streak of deliberate nonconformity and a critical wit. She was my French teacher while I lived and worked in Paris, and I believe she saw herself as an ambassador of the "other" France. She and I became fast friends—we were not all that far apart in age, actually—and she made it her project to usher me past the country's official image, behind the back of Marianne. I spent many late evenings in her apartment in the Latin Quarter. We'd eat simple food, share some wine, and talk about intolerance and art, translation and the untranslatable. We'd laugh hysterically. When she laughed, it was a high-pitched sound that shook her small frame, and to this day I have never seen anyone get so red in the cheeks as she did. Her slightly darker skin did nothing to mask her habitual, furious blush. For her, I bought my first bottle of wine ever: it was a Saumur-Champigny, one of her favorites, from the Loire. This felt like a rite of passage. With her, I went to Caveau de la Huchette, to listen to jazz and dance on a cramped floor until the last Métro had long since left the station and I had to walk the long, dark avenues back to where I was staying, singing all the while. She was the one who introduced me to so many of the French artists I came to admire for their skill with language; for their rebellious, poetic and sometimes tragic voices: Serge Gainsbourg, Leo Ferré, Emile Ajar (Romain Gary). I think it's safe to say I was always somewhat enamored of this woman I felt was a kindred spirit. I am sorry to say that I am no longer in touch with her, so our friendship is now just a memory. "Avec le temps va, tout s'en va . . ." Unless, someday . . . But regardless, wherever she is, I hope she is happy, and I hope she knows how much difference she made. Merci, E. F. Gros bisous.
Labels:

Comments

Maria Verivaki said…
a first bottle of wine - the day you feel like a grown up, when you realise that the senses go far beyond the eyes!
February 9, 2009 at 2:52 AM

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tap Root Manuscript

Here is an early music memory: I am very young. If not still a toddler, then not much older. I am running around the living room, squealing with unrestrained delight, while my dad chases me to the tune of "I Am the Lion" by Neil Diamond (Ba-pa-la ding-ga!). He's reached deep down and pulled out his big baritone voice—the one he also used for "Old Man River" on occasion; the one that always awed me. It's the early 1970s, and although hopelessly pop and showy, there is no shame in liking Neil Diamond. Not at this time. Later, I'd go through nearly two decades of keeping this (admittedly) often schmaltzy artist at more than arm's length. When I bothered to remember Neil Diamond, which generally I didn't, I thought of him more like a skeleton in my musical closet; a dirty little secret that, if exposed, would set me up for some heavy razzing from friends. I don't remember when it was that I recovered my dad's Tap Root Manuscript album. It wa...
7 comments
Read more

Black Kids Read, Too

The worst kind of prejudice is the kind that slips under the radar. It's too subtle to cause a stir (and if you point it out, you'll usually get a sideways look: you're the one making too much of nothing), but its corrosive message nevertheless seeps in—subliminally, insidiously—beating down the spirit of the group it belittles or excludes. I am blessed to have been raised by two parents who were sensitive to prejudicial undercurrents; they fought against them in their own distinct ways through the tumultuous 1960s, and into the 70s and 80s as I was growing up. And it seems, thinking about it now, that they never missed a good learning moment with me: we often discussed issues of bias, prejudice, stereotype, and their harmful effects. This week, images in some of my kindergartener's reading books gave me pause. And in wrestling with how to handle these, I remembered something I hadn't thought of in many years: the library at the Brentwood Science Magnet School in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Touch Typing

Between seventh and eighth grades (or between eighth and ninth?) the deal was this: if I wanted to take an art class in summer school, I had to take typing. So said Mom. Although I didn't mind being in an art studio soldering bits of stained glass together, the thought of staying inside, seated in front of a typewriter when I could see the sun in its beautiful blue sky out the window, was torture. Still, I sat there. Such is the suffering one will endure for art! I typed the home keys in order, hundreds of times: a-s-d-f-g-h-j-k-l-;. I stretched my fingers up for T and Y and down for B. I did pages of the prototype sentence, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs." Yes, it has every letter of the alphabet in it at least once. I learned to automatically put two spaces after each period. (I have had a hard time undoing this habit, but a copy editor's job these days is often to make sure there is only one space following a complete sentence!) It's fair to say...
3 comments
Read more